The presidential race began Saturday with Herman Cain’s dramatic, theatrical exit from the contest, but it ended with a substantive and subdued discussion of constitutional issues at Mike Huckabee’s presidential forum.

Each allotted an equal, set amount of time, six 2012 hopefuls – Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul – fielded questions on issues of state sovereignty and federal power from a friendly panel of Republican moderators.

Huckabee hosted the forum on an extended version of his Fox News show, and invited three Republican state attorneys general – Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia, Pam Bondi of Florida and Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma – to question the candidates.

“We heard more about the Constitution more than every other debate combined,” Bondi concluded at the end of the two-hour event.

It was an opportunity for the candidates to pay homage to Huckabee – who has so far stayed neutral in the 2012 GOP primary. He’ll hold a similar forum in Iowa, focused on abortion, on Dec. 14.

At the start of the forum, Huckabee noted that Jon Huntsman declined “repeated invitations” to participate, and said Cain had also declined before suspending his campaign earlier Saturday.

Gingrich was pressed on some of his more moderate stances – namely, his support for a health care mandate and his appearance in a commercial with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, where the two talked about climate change.

“Sitting on the couch with Nancy Pelosi is the dumbest single thing I’ve done in the last few years — but if you notice, I’ve never favored cap and trade, and in fact I actively testified against it,” Gingrich said. “I was at the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee the same day Al Gore was there to testify for it, I testified against it and through American Solutions we fought it in the Senate and played a major role in defeating it.”

Perry, who has turned in a string of embarrassing debate performances, didn’t make any major gaffes, but did stumble slightly when Cuccinelli challenged him on the assertion that an executive order would effectively repeal health care reform.

“The executive order obviously gives you that authority [to repeal the law],” he told Cuccinelli. “But also, as I said earlier, having men and women in those agencies who are going to share your philosophy – I think that’s an important message.”

Cuccinelli shot back: “I just want to be real clear to make sure I understand this: You are taking the position that you can stop the implementation of a law passed by Congress, signed by the president, with an executive order?”

Perry walked his comments back, saying an executive order could stop “parts” of the health care law.

And Romney defended his role in shaping the Massachusetts health care law, saying the final bill was “different” than the one he’d originally proposed but that he was pleased with the imperfect end result.

“Do I like the bill overall? Yes. Am I proud of what we did for our state? Yes,” he said. “But what the president has done is way beyond what we envisioned.”

The forum was specifically designed to prevent infighting between the candidates in attendance – each was interviewed separately, and even during the candidates’ one-minute final statements, they did not appear on the set together. Also missing were the raucous crowds and the journalist-moderators drawing the candidates out of their comfort zones. The questioners — all Republican elected officials — often voiced agreement with the candidates on their answers to policy questions.

When Bachmann said she’d abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, Cuccinelli said, “You’re talking to a crowd here that is all suing the EPA in one way or another.”

“I think we heard thoughtful, substantive conversation without infighting,” Bondi said at the end of the forum.

But it didn’t take long for the collegiality to dissolve.

While Huckabee said all the candidates did “an outstanding job,” Cuccinelli — himself a tea party hero who recently signaled he would run for governor of Virginia in 2013 — didn’t feel the same way. In a post-forum interview on Fox News, he blasted Gingrich’s moderate stances and also said he wasn’t persuaded by Romney.

“My benchmark was: I want to leave with comfort that each of these six candidates is going to be a limited-government, conservative president,” he said. “And despite pressing Newt Gingrich several times, I didn’t get that. I did not get that. We could have another compassionate conservative on our hands.”

Of Romney’s stances on health care, he said: “I don’t see a lot of difference there between him and the president.”

And the candidates themselves, denied the opportunity to challenge one another face to face, quickly got to work doing so once the forum wrapped.

In response to Gingrich’s claim that he testified against cap-and-trade, both the Perry and Paul campaigns emailed around a 2007 interview in which Gingrich said a 2000 carbon cap pledge George W. Bush made was “something I would strongly support.”